Rose, Thorn, Bud template

What is a Rose, Thorn, Bud template?

The Rose, Thorn, Bud template is a structured reflection framework that helps teams sort feedback into three categories: what's going well (roses), what's not working (thorns), and what has potential to grow (buds). It gives groups a simple, repeatable way to move from broad observations to focused action, whether they're reviewing a sprint, evaluating a process, or pressure-testing a new initiative.

Use this template to run a Rose, Thorn, Bud exercise with your team and quickly surface patterns across positive, negative, and emerging feedback. Because it separates reflection into distinct categories before grouping ideas through affinity clustering, the exercise keeps conversations balanced and productive. Teams walk away with a clear picture of strengths, pain points, and opportunities they can act on together.

The Rose, Thorn, Bud method is rooted in human-centered design principles, making it a natural fit for teams practicing design thinking exercises or running retrospective facilitation. And because it works in Mural's visual workspace, distributed and hybrid teams can participate in real time, no conference room required.

The Rose, Thorn, Bud template helps teams:

Define the problem by aligning on the central topic, question, or process you want to evaluate before anyone starts adding feedback.

Surface honest feedback by capturing what's working, what isn't, and what could be in one structured view that gives every voice equal space.

Identify themes by grouping related sticky notes through affinity clustering to spot patterns and reveal recurring issues or bright spots.

Prioritize next steps by moving from raw feedback to ranked action items so your team leaves with a shared understanding of what to tackle first.

Build a reflection habit by running the exercise on a regular cadence — after sprints, project milestones, or quarterly reviews — to create a culture of continuous improvement.

How to use the Rose, Thorn, Bud template

Follow these steps to facilitate a productive Rose, Thorn, Bud activity with your team. Each step builds on the one before it, moving your group from open reflection to clear, prioritized action.

Step 1: Gather a diverse group of participants

Invite people from different roles, functions, or experience levels to get a full picture of the situation. The more varied the perspectives, the richer the feedback. Aim for 4 to 10 participants for the best balance of input and manageability.

Step 2: Introduce the topic and set expectations

Clearly define the problem, process, or experience your team will reflect on. Provide any relevant context so everyone starts from the same place. If your team is distributed, open the mural ahead of the session and share a brief written prompt so participants can begin thinking before the exercise starts.

Step 3: Capture what's going well (Rose)

Ask each participant to add sticky notes describing positive aspects, successes, or things that should continue. Encourage specificity: "our onboarding emails had a 40% open rate" is more useful than "marketing is good." Pro tip: Use Mural's private mode so team members contribute ideas independently before seeing what others wrote. This avoids groupthink and produces more honest input.

Step 4: Identify what's not working (Thorn)

Now shift to challenges, frustrations, or blockers. Remind participants this isn't about blame; it's about surfacing problems the team can solve together. Keep the same one-idea-per-sticky-note rule to make organizing easier later.

Step 5: Explore opportunities for growth (Bud)

This is where your team looks forward. Buds are ideas, experiments, or early signals of potential. They might emerge from thorns ("what if we tried this instead?") or from roses ("this is working; how could we build on it?"). Encourage creative thinking here.

Step 6: Cluster your feedback into themes

Once all the sticky notes are on the canvas, group related ideas together. This affinity clustering step is where patterns emerge. You can do this manually by dragging sticky notes into groups, or speed up the process with Mural AI's Cluster feature, which automatically groups sticky notes based on content similarity. Label each cluster with a clear theme name.

Step 7: Prioritize and assign action items

Review the clusters together as a team. Use voting to prioritize which themes to address first, then define specific next steps with owners and deadlines. The Summarize feature in Mural AI can help distill lengthy cluster discussions into concise takeaways your team can reference later.

When to use the Rose, Thorn, Bud template (with examples)

The Rose, Thorn, Bud framework works in any situation where a team needs to pause, reflect, and realign. Here are three common scenarios where the exercise delivers clear results.

Sprint retrospectives and project debriefs

A product team wraps up a two-week sprint and needs to evaluate what went smoothly and what slowed them down. The facilitator opens the Rose, Thorn, Bud template, gives the team five minutes in private mode to add their feedback, then clusters the responses. Thorns reveal that handoff delays between design and engineering happened three sprints in a row, while a bud suggests pairing designers with engineers earlier in the process. The team leaves with one clear experiment to run next sprint.

Customer experience reviews

A customer success team collects feedback after a product launch. Roses highlight that users find the onboarding flow intuitive. Thorns surface confusion around a new pricing page. Buds point to interest in a self-service support option. By clustering the sticky notes, the team spots that three separate thorns all relate to unclear product messaging, giving the marketing team a focused area to improve.

Quarterly team health checks

A department lead runs a Rose, Thorn, Bud retrospective at the end of each quarter to gauge team morale and operational health. Roses often capture wins like improved meeting cadences. Thorns flag recurring pain points such as unclear decision-making authority. Buds might surface ideas like rotating facilitation responsibilities. Over time, the quarterly cadence creates a visible record of progress that the team can reference.

Tips for running a Rose, Thorn, Bud exercise with teams

Get more out of every session with these facilitation and workflow tips:

1. Color-code your categories. Assign distinct colors to roses (pink), thorns (blue), and buds (green) so patterns are visible at a glance. The template comes pre-configured with these colors, so your team can start adding sticky notes right away.

2. Use private mode first, then reveal. Have participants add their sticky notes in private mode before making them visible to the group. This encourages honest input and prevents early ideas from anchoring the conversation. (Facilitation Superpowers feature.)

3. Set a timer for each phase. Give the team 3 to 5 minutes per category (roses, thorns, buds) to keep energy high and prevent over-deliberation. Mural's built-in timer keeps everyone aware of the pace without the facilitator having to interrupt.

4. Let AI handle the heavy lifting on clustering. After brainstorming, use the Cluster feature in Mural AI to automatically group related sticky notes. This saves time during facilitation and helps surface themes your team might miss when organizing manually.

5. Close with committed actions, not just observations. The exercise loses its value if the team reflects but doesn't act. End every session by assigning owners to the top-priority items and setting a date to check progress.